PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) - The Bureau of Land Management has released a draft plan that includes five approaches to managing its 2.5 million acres of public forests in western Oregon.
The plan, released on Friday, is crucial to counties, which are dependent on logging revenues from those forests. In recent decades logging levels have dropped, leaving the counties with smaller revenues to fund basic services.
The alternatives contain varying approaches to where logging would be permitted, which areas would be set for recreation and which would become forest reserves that provide protected fish and wildlife habitat.
The public can comment on the plan for 90 days and attend 16 open houses or workshops in the region.
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